Winner of The Hector MacMillan Best New Scottish Play 2023
Photograph by Peter Dibdin
The Play
Set in 1969, Castle Lennox is a play with songs—with lyrics by Linda, and music composed by MJ McCarthy—about the strength, wit and resilience of those who were sent to institutions for people with learning disabilities during a regime of segregation from the 1930s to the 1990s.
Castle Lennox is an inspiring tale, based on a real institution, brought to the stage by Lung Ha Theatre Company in collaboration with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh.
Photograph by Hayley Sinclair
The Playwright
Linda McLean is a Scottish playwright based in Glasgow. Her plays include Glory on Earth, Every Five Minutes, Any Given Day, Sex & God, strangers, babies, Shimmer, Riddance, One Good Beating, Thingummy Bob, and an adaptation of Alice Munro’s The View From Castle Rock for Stellar Quines and the EIBF.
From 2008 to 2015, she chaired Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland. She also works as an artistic associate with Magic Theatre, San Francisco.
In 2015, Actes Sud-Papiers published an anthology of her work, which Sarah Vermande and Blandine Pelissiér translated into French.
Linda was the Creative Fellow at Edinburgh University’s Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities in 2011. Whilst there, she and the late Professor Susan Manning published their Conversation: Gathering Uncertainties.
She has also served on the Artistic Board of Magic Theatre Company, San Francisco.